Common Google AdWords Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Most ecommerce businesses use AdWords to generate traffic. In essence it’s pretty simple – you bid for search terms in Google, your ad appears if someone searches for that term, and you pay only if someone clicks on that ad. It’s a great system, but it does have a few traps.

Introducing Quality Score

How much you pay per click depends on many factors. A common misconception is that it’s a simple auction – if someone is bidding 50 cents per click (cpc), a bid of 51 cpc will appear in the ad slot above. It’s a bit trickier than that.

Google wants ads that are relevant. If the quality of the ads is higher, more people click them. Google assigns each advertiser’s keyword a quality score between one (lowest) and 10. If you are paying 50 cpc and your ad has a quality score of 5, and your competitor is paying 40 cpc for an ad with a score of 8, it’ll likely appear above yours, getting more clicks for less money. Getting your quality score higher is important.

The best way to increase your quality score is to increase your click-through rate (CTR). If your ad is viewed 100 times (called impressions ) and clicked on twice, your click-through rate is 2 percent. Generally your click-through rate should be at least 1 percent.

You can see your quality score by hovering your mouse over the “eligible” column.
(Click for larger image).

To increase your CTR, you can have your ad shown less often, or clicked on more often. Let’s look at both scenarios.

Negative Keywords

A common problem: your ad shows up for irrelevant search terms. If you are selling makeup, you might bid for the keyword “makeup.” However, your ad will show up when someone searches for “makeup artist”, “makeup classes”, “makeup jobs,” and many more. Someone looking for a makeup artist probably isn’t interested in buying makeup, so you have increased your impressions needlessly and lowered your CTR. Adding negative keywords can reduce this problem.

Here’s how you add negative keywords. Go into AdWords. At the bottom of your keywords screen you’ll see + Negative keywords. Open this and add your negative keywords. You can choose ad grouplevel but generally campaign level is better.

By adding lots of negative keywords you can decrease your impressions, and increase your CTR and your quality score. In this case, “artist”, “classes” and “jobs” are good negative keywords. Here’s a collection of generic negative keywords for inspiration.

Creating Ad Variations

Sometimes making small changes in an ad result in big changes in CTR. AdWords has a neat tool -- called Ad Variations -- that helps with this problem.

Go into your Ad Group in AdWords, and where you see ads, simply create another one. Google will automatically rotate your multiple ads to different users. Over time it will show the higher-performing ad more and the lower-performing ad less, increasing your CTR automatically. Start with two or three ad variations, and once there’s a clear winner, use that one as the base for more variants.

Choosing the Right Pages

Many AdWords campaigns send all traffic to their homepage. You’ll get a better result by pointing the ad to a specific page. The page you point your ad to is known as a “landing page.”

For example, you run a bicycle shop. The word “bicycle” will probably go to the homepage. However, ads for the keyword “mountain bike” should point to your mountain bike page. This will almost certainly increase sales.

If someone searches for “Holstar Lightning Men’s Mountain Bike”, point them at the product page. The rule: always point ads at the most specific page. Yes, it’s a bit more work to setup, but your sales will increase.

Choose the Best Words

Many people just bid for a few of the “big” words. For our bicycle shop example, the keyword “bicycle” would clearly be very popular. However, it would also be very competitive and expensive to buy, and generic words tend to result in fewer sales.

A better approach is to go for a large number of less popular words. Instead of five popular words, use 200 less popular ones. That sounds daunting, but help is at hand -- Google’s keyword tool.

Enter some popular words and it will generate some alternatives. Entering bicycle returns about 200 results, including some possibly useful sounding words (depending on your business) such as:

racing bicyclemen’s bicyclefolding bikebicycle retailercycling clothing

All of these terms are likely to be cheaper keywords than “bicycle”. Also look at your site category section names and product names, to get more keyword ideas.

Bringing it all Together

Now that we have a good list of keywords, we need to group them properly. Group your keywords into themes – typically around five – 20 related keywords in each group.

In AdWords, create a new Ad Group for each theme. Each Ad Group will share the same ads and the same landing page, so good grouping is important.

You could create an Ad Group called “Mountain Bikes” containing the following keywords:

Mountain bikeOff road bikeDownhill bikeTrail bikeDirt bike

You would then create two ad variants for this group:

Mountain Bikes

Wide range of mountain bikes

in stock now

www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes

And

Cheap Mountain Bikes

Best prices on mountain bikes

available online now

www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes

 By creating the two variants we are letting Google do the hard work to see which one performs better. Note the specific landing page used. Repeat this process for each theme.

Once you have your campaign up and running, be sure to check on it once every few weeks. The first attempt is rarely optimal and so monitoring is critical. It’s easy to spend dozens of hours on creating the perfect campaign, so it’s up to you to balance your time relative to your AdWords budget.

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping-Cart-Reviews.com , the leading shopping cart information site. He lives in Sydney, Australia where he works on e-commerce sites, helping to maxmize their profitability. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/markbaa .

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UpClick Simplifies Selling Digital Goods

Merchants who sell digital goods online face challenges that most traditional e-tailers do not, such as high payment gateway costs and difficult-to-work-with affiliates programs. UpClick addresses those issues using a novel combination of a fully integrated secure checkout and an integrated affiliates program. The software is designed from the ground up to maximize the profitability of merchants selling digital goods.

An Overview

UpClick’s big selling point is its free payment gateway – the homepage screams zero percent transaction fees. The reality, as always, is a bit more complex. For transactions less than $40 it’s totally free. This compares very favorably with fees from digital-goods services like Clickbank and payment gateways like 2Checkout. For transactions more than $40 they charge 6.9 percent on the amount over $40, so if you’re dealing with high value, high volume sales you may do better looking elsewhere.

Of course, the biggest player in payment solutions for small businesses is PayPal. UpClick has a compelling value proposition for merchants who use PayPal – you can accept PayPal as a payment type, and UpClick will absorb the fees. That alone makes the company very appealing to lots of people.

UpClick is a bit confusing at first because it tries to be all things to all people. This in itself is admirable; however, it doesn’t clearly communicate the different offerings and the value in those offerings. As a result, the new user can easily become confused. However, persistence pays off.

Describe your products and their attributes on the UpClick set-up screen.
(Click for larger image).The Value in UpClick

The first step to selling your products with UpClick, of course, is to have your digital goods. The majority of current UpClick merchants sell software, presumably because the company offers good built-in functionality to support software e-tailers. For example, you can provide UpClick with a list of the software license keys, which they can issue to customers. This makes things simple for both the merchant and the customer.

Since the business model is based around up selling and cross selling, much of the product setup involves up selling and cross selling. As you setup your account, you are prompted with questions as to which category your product falls into. This lets UpClick provide the best complementary products and avoid competitive ones. There are also opportunities to manually select products you believe have the best up-sell opportunity.

Tracking

An impressive feature of the service is its openness. Rather than being a closed system, they are very open about integrating with other services. Built-in support for button-level tracking via Google or WebTrends encourages transparency and accountability.

Another feature that differentiates UpClick is its attitude toward affiliates. Affiliate networks often put up barriers up between the merchants and the affiliates. UpClick has taken the opposite approach by actively encouraging them to talk and to work together.

Internationalization

UpClick is headquartered in the bi-lingual city of Montreal. Multi-language and multi-currency capabilities are baked into the software from the ground up, not added as an after thought as is so often the case with such products.

Creating multi-language versions of product descriptions is very easy. More interesting, is being able to easily create multiple price points for different currencies.

For example, if your product is $29.95 (US), it will automatically convert it to other currencies – e.g. $37.66 Australian dollars (at time of writing). However, you can then override it and create a more locale-friendly pricing, such as $34.95 (AU) or $39.95 (AU). This should help boost international sales substantially – people always prefer to buy in their own currency.

Affiliates

The affiliates offering forms a key component of the platform. This can be a great sales boost to merchants and a potentially lucrative income stream for motivated affiliates.

Rather than distinguishing between merchants and affiliates in a very clear cut way (although, confusingly, UpClick makes the distinction in the signup process), it seems all merchants are affiliates. This makes sense as up-selling other merchants’ products – basically, affiliate selling – is such a core part of the product.

This has a number of benefits to vendors:

Expands range of outlets for their products Great exposure to large cross-section of people Introduces their product to customers who may not otherwise have considered it Achieves all this without charging extra money – just offer a reasonable percentage to affiliates, and it’s all done. For affiliates, there’s an easy-to-use system and a well-optimized checkout process that should increase conversions.

UpClick offers opportunities for cross- and up-selling products. (Click for larger image).What’s the Drawback?

UpClick isn’t for everyone. High volume, high value digital goods sales vendors should look elsewhere. The 6.9 percent charge cuts in on sales of more than $40. While this isn’t a disaster for lower-volume players, for some it could eat profits. Also, despite having a well-optimized checkout process, opportunities for optimization are limited.

Overall, this is a strong competitor in the digital-goods market and well worth checking out.

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping-Cart-Reviews.com , the leading shopping cart information site. He lives in Sydney, Australia where he works on e-commerce sites, helping to maxmize their profitability. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/markbaa .

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Save the Sale with New PayPal Tools and Data

Online payment service, PayPal commissioned a survey (conducted by comScore) through its SMB merchant services division to find out why online shoppers are abandoning their carts. According to PayPal, the average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109—and that adds up to a lot of missed sales for online merchants.

The PayPal survey revealed that nearly half of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times over a period of three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and a lack of convenience during the check-out process.

The survey showed that high shipping cost was the largest single reason for cart abandonment. Additionally, the survey found that if merchants had provided shipping costs upfront, this might have caused 40 percent of participants to complete the purchase.

Eddie Davis, senior director of SMB merchant services says that it’s critical for merchants make the checkout experience easy and to make costs transparent in order to get shoppers to buy.

As a result of the survey findings, PayPal has launched a new Express Checkout feature – the PayPal Instant Update API. This new tool gives merchants cart functionality that ultimately encourages shoppers to purchase.

The PayPal Instant Update API helps merchants provide customers with the key shopping information they need upfront.  By integrating the new API, merchants can show order details; including shipping options, insurance choices and tax totals, earlier in the check-out process.

In an Express Checkout, shoppers will still pay on your site; however, they don’t need to reenter shipping, billing, or payment information because the information is already available from PayPal.  This lets merchants offer shoppers a more simplified and expedited checkout process while providing the buyer with the what they’re looking for– that is more detailed shipping, insurance, and tax information.  

Shoppers Wary

PayPal’s survey also indicated that the economy still has shoppers wary about clicking the purchase button.  More than one-third of respondents abandoned checkout because they didn’t plan for all of the expenses; while more than 25 percent indicated they left the site to search for a coupon.

The good news for merchants is that one-third of shoppers said they later returned to the same site to buy.  Another 20 percent of shoppers purchased the items at a brick and mortar store or on a competitor’s Web site.

To help merchants retain those potentially lost dollars in the dropped carts, Davis says that merchants need to remember the items that customers abandon, and make it easy for them to buy when they return.  

He said, “Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is also a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”

More Reasons Why Shoppers Abandon

PayPal’s cart abandonment study also revealed additional reasons why shoppers tend to drop their cart before making a purchase.  According to the survey results, at least a fifth of all U.S. respondents cited the following as very important reasons for cart abandonment;

High shipping charges: 46 percent Wanted to comparison shop: 37 percent Lack of money: 36 percent Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 percent Wanted to shop offline: 26 percent Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 percent Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 percent Couldn’t find customer support: 22 percent Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 percent

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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eBay Live 2009: Going, Going…Gone

Last year people were surprised when eBay announced plans to cancel its 2009 eBay Live event.  At that time the company said smaller workshops would take place in various locations rather than one large event. EBay also said that the eBay Live event would return in 2010 in Orlando.

Not so, according to a statement recently made by Lorrie Norrington, president, eBay Marketplaces. EBay will continue to offer multiple smaller events that will replace the larger eBay Live conference.

From Live 2008 to On Location 2010

The last eBay Live event took place in Chicago in 2008, and attracted thousands of conference attendees, more than 700 eBay employees and hundreds of exhibitors.  While rumors of Live’s demise circulated in Chicago, the conference was considered a success—despite the fact that some attendees showed up in aluminum foil caps in silent protest of what they called eBay brainwashing tactics.

When the seven-year run of eBay Live events ended in Chicago, eBay said that it would not hold a 2009 event, but that the traditional gala would return in 2010 in Orlando, Florida. In place of the big event this year eBay plans to host multiple, smaller events nationwide.

Called “eBay: On Location,” the event will kick off in Orlando in February, replacing the previously announced August date for eBay Live.

In discussing the reasons behind changing up the event, Norrington said, "Many sellers and buyers have told us that although eBay Live is a terrific way to learn and network, they would enjoy more local events that don't require costly travel."

Some industry watchers cite economic hardship and the resulting lower attendance numbers as contributing factors to the demise of eBay Live. However, another reason for the dip in attendance may be that the eBay market—and community—has simply matured.  EBay members, who may have previously attended just to proudly show their eBay colors at the events, are now more concerned with turning profits and bottom lines then with spending money on airfare to attend Live.

In creating the new schedule, Norrington said that the goal would be to provide eBay: On Location events within a day's drive for as many sellers and buyers as possible. On Location events are expected to wrap up in August 2010 in eBay’s hometown of San Jose, Calif.—just in time to celebrate the company’s 15th anniversary.

Other dates and venues are still in the planning stages, and eBay sellers can sign up on the On Location Web site to be notified when dates and locations for the events are set.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG .

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Review: WebPlus X2 Simplifies E-commerce Design

If you’re an online seller or retailer, it’s increasingly important to have your own Web site.  Whether you sell on eBay, Etsy or any other online marketplace, you still need to invest in your own central business or Web shop. From your own site you can direct customers to other channels you sell through, and vice versa.

For many sellers, the challenge to getting their own Web site is often a lack of budget or know-how. But you don’t need hundreds of pages and a larger-than-life Web presence.  You can start small just by getting your pertinent business information online, and invest in like marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) down the road.

No HTML or Programming Skills Required

One way to obtain a business Web site online is to use Web site design software, such as the easy-to-use Web Plus X2 from Serif

WebPlus X2 offers a selection of professional templates from business and e-commerce to home and hobby themes.
(Click for larger image).

WebPlus X2 offers an interface that’s similar to desktop publishing software.  All you need to do is edit templates to design the site’s pages, and the software renders the HTML code to create the different pages within your site. 

This particular software package makes it easy to create a Web site using basic drag-and-drop features and pre-defined, editable regions within the templates.  With a quick click, more experienced designers can work directly with the HTML code.

Create Interactive Sites with E-commerce Functions

Web Plus X2 comes with a detailed user guide and the program installation CD, in addition to template pack CDs that contain templates for Business and Commerce or Home and Hobby Web sites.

One of the reasons we looked at WebPlus X2 is that it offers e-commerce functions for adding a shopping cart to your site and features for secure payment processing. You can also include interactive features such as blogs, forums, and videos to your Web shop.

Before getting started, you should gather your assets—that is any company logos and images that you currently use for marketing—and have them ready to insert in your new Web site as you lay out the design.

Getting Started

After installing the program and the Business and Commerce template pack, you’re ready to build your own Web shop. Getting started is easy. From the File menu, click Startup Wizard, then simply choose Create and select Use Design template.

Here you will see a preview image of the available templates, as well as images of each page included in the template set. The usual selection includes templates for the standard pages you would expect to see on a business site, such as home, about, services, products, privacy policy and others.

After choosing a template to use for your site’s layout, you can then select a scheme. This allows you to change the colors in the default template so you can use your own logo and brand colors in the pages.

When you are happy with the colors, you can edit the default text and image regions from within the template to incorporate your own dialog and images.  You do this by selecting a pre-filled box with your mouse—then you highlight and delete the existing template information and replace it with your own business details.

Edit the default text and image regions from within the template to incorporate your own dialog and images.
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As you edit these text areas in the template you can change fonts, text and image colors and also add your own images.  You can make these changes across a master page—which pushes those changes to all pages in your template set. You can also open each page within the site to make individual section edits.

As anyone who has designed with templates can attest, you may find that the template set you choose lacks a specific type of page or feature you want on your site. WebPlus X2 lets you “copy” a page from another template into the set you are working with. This lets you work in a style you like with pages that best suit your business needs.

Special Features for E-commerce Designs

What makes WebPlus X2 stand out in a crowded software market is that it offers basic e-commerce functionality straight out of the box.

You can include e-commerce functions in your Web site by using the built-in WebPlus X2 PayPal wizard. The wizard correctly inserts all the information and functionality into your product pages for successful online selling.  WebPlus X2 also provides wizard functionality for Roman Cart and Mal's Cart.

WebPlus X2 also supports larger stores and catalogues through its database merge technology. This lets retailers easily feature large amounts of database information, like product descriptions, pictures and prices.

Of course, an e-commerce site needs more than just "buy buttons" and product images.  WebPlus X2 offers additional features that e-commerce site designers can use to their advantage, such as templates for e-mail marketing campaigns and search engine optimization controls.

These controls will help you to create keywords and other meta tags for search engines to improve your site’s search rank. You can also set up an analytics profile with Serif to obtain visitor analytics once your site has been published online.

Pricing and Availability

You can download WebPlus X2 or buy it on Serif’s Web site for $79.99.  WebPlus X2 works with Pentium PCs running Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or Vista operating systems.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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iTaggit Helps Sellers Determine Online Prices

iTaggit.com, an online seller's resource for valuing and organizing household items and collectibles has launched a new tool called “ValueRange It”. This new tool, which is an added feature for iTaggit customers, can help sellers by providing a value range for any item.

Using ValueRange helps sellers determine an opening or reserve selling price for their products.
(Click for larger image).

The ValueRange It tool, according to Amanda McGuckin Hager, iTaggit.com’s director of marketing, uses proprietary technology to sift through recent price data on millions of items to determine an accurate value range. 

According to Hager, iTaggit has always offered a value tool, but ValueRange It has recently been updated and is now a more prominent part of the site’s services. She describes the new tool as a search engine for understanding item value.

How It Works

On the iTaggit site, you simply type the product details in to the ValueRange It search box. To obtain the best results, you should be descriptive when searching—but not too specific.  For example, you could enter in phrases like 2002 Gibson Les Paul Guitar or Madame Alexander Doll , leaving out details like a specific color.

ValueRange It will scan the Internet, largely drawing on closed eBay listings to generate low, average and high values for the item.  For the most part, the different values will help you figure out what price you can expect to get for your item, taking in to account the item's history and condition. You can also refine your ValueRange It results for a completely customized value range for your specific item.

Based on the ValueRange It results, you can use the data to help determine the best minimum or starting bid price.

Hager cautions sellers that a tool like ValueRange It cannot take the place of certified appraisals for items like real estate, cars, or high-end gold jewelry.

“For most other items, the tool can provide online sellers with price data to help them make smart decisions when trying to decide what to do with their belongings—be it sell, insure, donate, or simply track prices over time,” she said.

Integration with Other iTaggit Services

You can access the ValueRange It search engine for research purposes, but the tool is also integrated with Itaggit’s other online selling services. 

The tool’s “Sell It” function lets you post item with a description and photos or video, and then broadcast them to multiple online marketplaces and social networks, as frequently as desired.  Supported platforms include Craigslist, eBay, Facebook and Oodle.

Consumers and homeowners can also use the ValueRange It tool and iTaggit’s other online services to track valuables and item prices for insurance purposes.

Pricing and Availability

Itaggit offers several subscription choices, which provide a set number of items you can have in your account and a number of ValueRange IT uses. The basic account, at $19.99 per year, lets you post up to 20 items and access ValueRange It 20 times. The $9.99 per month account offers unlimited items stored in your Itaggit account and 25 ValueRange IT uses per month.

iTaggit also offers a free account that lets you post one item on iTaggit and access ValueRange IT three times so you can test the service and see how it works before subscribing.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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10 Tips for Selling on Kijiji

If you’re unfamiliar with Kijiji, it’s a free local network for posting buy, sell, trade, jobs and other classified ads. Kijiji (pronounced “ka-gee-gee”) has individual sites for specific cities in several countries including the United States and Canada.  

Local classifieds are a good option for online sellers who have larger items that are expensive to ship, items that are hard to sell “sight unseen” or lower-value items where listing fees can cut profits.

Kijiji registration is optional, but with it you can quickly and easily manage your live ads.
(Click for larger image).Kijiji for Beginners

Selling on Kijiji differs greatly from eBay and other online marketplaces. When you use Kijiji, there is no contractual agreement if someone offers to buy an item from you.  Also, buyers and sellers do not have any type of protection or the means to conduct the transaction through the Kijiji site. 

As the seller, you simply post your classified ad and interested buyers contact you by e-mail directly from the listing page.  Transactions are all managed off-site, without intervention by Kijiji.

Posting and replying to ads on the site is completely free. You can post up to 25 unique ads on Kijiji every day, with each ad staying online for 60 days.

Tips for Selling on Kijiji

For the past year I have been using Kijiji, instead of eBay, to sell used computers. It was obvious that this type of item was best suited to a local market—a computer tower is expensive to ship, and buyers can view and test the system before buying.

Here are 10 tips for selling on Kijiji—things that I do in my own listings—to produce better quality leads and sales.

1.    Register an account: Kijiji does not require you to register to post; however, with a registered account you can use a "My Kijiji" dashboard for quick access to your ads and page view information.  If you plan to frequently list on Kijiji, make registering on the site your first step.

2.    Keep personal details to a minimum: If you sell items from your home, think twice about adding your house address and phone number in the public ad.  Instead, provide detailed contact information— at your own discretion— in private e-mails with interested buyers.

3.    Do the research: Search Kijiji for similar items to see what categories people use and to get a better idea of current selling prices in your local area. This can also help you choose keywords to use in your title (e.g. use the keywords that are getting the most page views).

4.    Use a template:  Mange multiple Kijiji ads by creating a basic template, in Word or even Notepad, that you can copy-and-paste into each ad you post.  The template should contain the basic information you carry over to each ad, such as contact information, pick-up and delivery details, and so on.  Save each ad you list in a file on your computer for future use.

5.    Send ads to top category page: On some Kijiji sites, you might get an e-mail to let you know your listing has fallen off the first page for the category you have listed in, and an offer to “bump” your ad back to the main for a small fee of $1.99. You can bump the ad yourself by deleting it and reposting it as a new ad. If you have saved the ads in a template, you can put your item back on the main category page in seconds.

6.    Don’t delete pending sale ads: Kijiji sellers can save time by not deleting an ad until the item has actually sold. Don’t delete the ad as soon as an e-mail comes in with a request to buy, as the person may never show up to get the item.  If you leave the ad online you can go back and respond to the second and subsequent requests after a “no-show.”

7.    Provide viewing and pick-up details: Specify times and dates that people can view or pick-up the item, as well as delivery or local-pick-up-only details in the text of your ad.  This will save you time in responding to basic e-mail questions. This type of information should be included in your template so you can simply copy and paste the details in each new ad you post.

8.     Be honest: Always be accurate and honest in your ad. The more details you provide, the less time you’ll save in responding to e-mails. Be sure to upload at least one or two clear photos of the item you are selling. Kijiji allows you to include four images (up to 4MB) with each ad.

9.    Add a guarantee: Like most online marketplaces, Kijiji buyers also like to feel confident about a seller before making a purchase. By adding a simple guarantee you will encourage more inquiries and more sales.  With used computers I offer a 21-day guarantee against hardware failure (or free replacement). Since adding that to my ads, sales have nearly doubled.

10. Monitor and reply quickly: If you are porting an existing business to Kijiji and you sell multiples of similar items, track your best listing and selling days. Over time you will see a pattern emerge that will help you determine what days are best for having your item on page one in any given category.  Also, be sure to set up a dedicated e-mail address just for Kijiji to help you to better monitor incoming e-mails so you can get replies out to interested buyers before they move on to another listing.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Three Facebook Apps for EBay Sellers

According to Facebook's own data, this popular social networking site has more than 200 million active users, with more than half logging in to the site each day. One big reason people keep returning to Facebook is the site’s applications, called apps for short.

 According to Facebook 70 percent of its members engage with the more than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook.

There are a number of Facebook applications that sellers can use to promote their own eBay business to friends and acquaintances on Facebook. We look at three eBay applications that you can add to your own profile to promote your eBay business on the Facebook platform.

eBay Marketplace for Facebook lets you see what your friends are buying and selling on eBay.
(Click for larger image).Promoting EBay Items in Your Facebook Profile

eBay Auctions 

Developed by Phil Tucker, this eBay Auctions app lets you show your own auction listings on your Facebook profile. Using the app, you can also browse your friends' auctions, search eBay, create a wish-list, comment on auctions and more.

Once you have installed the application, you simply need to provide your auction listing numbers to load the listing in your Facebook profile. The eBay Auctions application page also has an active discussion board where you can learn more about using specific functions of this application plus read even more tips for selling on Facebook.

eBay Marketplace 

Developed by eBay Inc., eBay Marketplace lets you see what your friends are buying, selling and watching on eBay. This app lets you add to your eBay watch list—and share your finds with your friends. You can take advantage of the eBay Marketplace application to also manage your own eBay items.

An eBay news feed will highlight your eBay activity, such as notifications when you sell an item, links to the items you have for sale, and updates on new eBay feedback left for you. This information appears in the eBay Marketplace News Feed, and you will also see these notifications for any of your friends using the eBay Marketplace app on Facebook.

To use the eBay Marketplace app you need to link your eBay account to Facebook when you add the application to your own Facebook profile.

At first glance, the eBay Marketplace “review” page contains more negative reviews than positive, but if you dig deeper you’ll see positive user comments in the app discussion forum, along with helpful advice and tips for giving this eBay-developed application a try.

eBay Wall

Developed by Iter-8 Partnership, this simple Facebook application lets you and your friends post eBay listings to each other's profile. You can show what you're selling on eBay or just discuss the neat things you find on eBay. To use the eBay Wall application, you don’t need to provide your eBay credentials, and the application developer says that it supports both the U.S. and U.K. eBay sites.

This Facebook application is still being updated, and with 78 monthly active users, it appears to be a relatively new eBay Facebook application.

More Ways to Sell on Facebook

This year we’ve seen selling through social media gain in popularity, and some of Facebook’s most popular selling applications are eBay-independent. Sellers who list on eBay and other online marketplaces can expand outside of these platforms and use popular Facebook applications to generate revenue.

Facebook Marketplace (powered by Oodle, Inc.) boasts 1,903,626 monthly active users, and you can use this app to buy and sell locally through Facebook. There is also Lemonade Stand, a Facebook application based on affiliate referral earnings.  You can read more about these applications in Three Ways to Make Money on Facebook.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Three Facebook Apps for EBay SellersWall St. seeks to extend rally

Three Facebook Apps for EBay Sellers

According to Facebook's own data, this popular social networking site has more than 200 million active users, with more than half logging in to the site each day. One big reason people keep returning to Facebook is the site’s applications, called apps for short.

 According to Facebook 70 percent of its members engage with the more than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook.

There are a number of Facebook applications that sellers can use to promote their own eBay business to friends and acquaintances on Facebook. We look at three eBay applications that you can add to your own profile to promote your eBay business on the Facebook platform.

eBay Marketplace for Facebook lets you see what your friends are buying and selling on eBay.
(Click for larger image).Promoting EBay Items in Your Facebook Profile

eBay Auctions 

Developed by Phil Tucker, this eBay Auctions app lets you show your own auction listings on your Facebook profile. Using the app, you can also browse your friends' auctions, search eBay, create a wish-list, comment on auctions and more.

Once you have installed the application, you simply need to provide your auction listing numbers to load the listing in your Facebook profile. The eBay Auctions application page also has an active discussion board where you can learn more about using specific functions of this application plus read even more tips for selling on Facebook.

eBay Marketplace 

Developed by eBay Inc., eBay Marketplace lets you see what your friends are buying, selling and watching on eBay. This app lets you add to your eBay watch list—and share your finds with your friends. You can take advantage of the eBay Marketplace application to also manage your own eBay items.

An eBay news feed will highlight your eBay activity, such as notifications when you sell an item, links to the items you have for sale, and updates on new eBay feedback left for you. This information appears in the eBay Marketplace News Feed, and you will also see these notifications for any of your friends using the eBay Marketplace app on Facebook.

To use the eBay Marketplace app you need to link your eBay account to Facebook when you add the application to your own Facebook profile.

At first glance, the eBay Marketplace “review” page contains more negative reviews than positive, but if you dig deeper you’ll see positive user comments in the app discussion forum, along with helpful advice and tips for giving this eBay-developed application a try.

eBay Wall

Developed by Iter-8 Partnership, this simple Facebook application lets you and your friends post eBay listings to each other's profile. You can show what you're selling on eBay or just discuss the neat things you find on eBay. To use the eBay Wall application, you don’t need to provide your eBay credentials, and the application developer says that it supports both the U.S. and U.K. eBay sites.

This Facebook application is still being updated, and with 78 monthly active users, it appears to be a relatively new eBay Facebook application.

More Ways to Sell on Facebook

This year we’ve seen selling through social media gain in popularity, and some of Facebook’s most popular selling applications are eBay-independent. Sellers who list on eBay and other online marketplaces can expand outside of these platforms and use popular Facebook applications to generate revenue.

Facebook Marketplace (powered by Oodle, Inc.) boasts 1,903,626 monthly active users, and you can use this app to buy and sell locally through Facebook. There is also Lemonade Stand, a Facebook application based on affiliate referral earnings.  You can read more about these applications in Three Ways to Make Money on Facebook.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Three Facebook Apps for EBay SellersWall St. seeks to extend rally

Common Google AdWords Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Most ecommerce businesses use AdWords to generate traffic. In essence it’s pretty simple – you bid for search terms in Google, your ad appears if someone searches for that term, and you pay only if someone clicks on that ad. It’s a great system, but it does have a few traps.

Introducing Quality Score

How much you pay per click depends on many factors. A common misconception is that it’s a simple auction – if someone is bidding 50 cents per click (cpc), a bid of 51 cpc will appear in the ad slot above. It’s a bit trickier than that.

Google wants ads that are relevant. If the quality of the ads is higher, more people click them. Google assigns each advertiser’s keyword a quality score between one (lowest) and 10. If you are paying 50 cpc and your ad has a quality score of 5, and your competitor is paying 40 cpc for an ad with a score of 8, it’ll likely appear above yours, getting more clicks for less money. Getting your quality score higher is important.

The best way to increase your quality score is to increase your click-through rate (CTR). If your ad is viewed 100 times (called impressions ) and clicked on twice, your click-through rate is 2 percent. Generally your click-through rate should be at least 1 percent.

You can see your quality score by hovering your mouse over the “eligible” column.
(Click for larger image).

To increase your CTR, you can have your ad shown less often, or clicked on more often. Let’s look at both scenarios.

Negative Keywords

A common problem: your ad shows up for irrelevant search terms. If you are selling makeup, you might bid for the keyword “makeup.” However, your ad will show up when someone searches for “makeup artist”, “makeup classes”, “makeup jobs,” and many more. Someone looking for a makeup artist probably isn’t interested in buying makeup, so you have increased your impressions needlessly and lowered your CTR. Adding negative keywords can reduce this problem.

Here’s how you add negative keywords. Go into AdWords. At the bottom of your keywords screen you’ll see + Negative keywords. Open this and add your negative keywords. You can choose ad grouplevel but generally campaign level is better.

By adding lots of negative keywords you can decrease your impressions, and increase your CTR and your quality score. In this case, “artist”, “classes” and “jobs” are good negative keywords. Here’s a collection of generic negative keywords for inspiration.

Creating Ad Variations

Sometimes making small changes in an ad result in big changes in CTR. AdWords has a neat tool -- called Ad Variations -- that helps with this problem.

Go into your Ad Group in AdWords, and where you see ads, simply create another one. Google will automatically rotate your multiple ads to different users. Over time it will show the higher-performing ad more and the lower-performing ad less, increasing your CTR automatically. Start with two or three ad variations, and once there’s a clear winner, use that one as the base for more variants.

Choosing the Right Pages

Many AdWords campaigns send all traffic to their homepage. You’ll get a better result by pointing the ad to a specific page. The page you point your ad to is known as a “landing page.”

For example, you run a bicycle shop. The word “bicycle” will probably go to the homepage. However, ads for the keyword “mountain bike” should point to your mountain bike page. This will almost certainly increase sales.

If someone searches for “Holstar Lightning Men’s Mountain Bike”, point them at the product page. The rule: always point ads at the most specific page. Yes, it’s a bit more work to setup, but your sales will increase.

Choose the Best Words

Many people just bid for a few of the “big” words. For our bicycle shop example, the keyword “bicycle” would clearly be very popular. However, it would also be very competitive and expensive to buy, and generic words tend to result in fewer sales.

A better approach is to go for a large number of less popular words. Instead of five popular words, use 200 less popular ones. That sounds daunting, but help is at hand -- Google’s keyword tool.

Enter some popular words and it will generate some alternatives. Entering bicycle returns about 200 results, including some possibly useful sounding words (depending on your business) such as:

racing bicyclemen’s bicyclefolding bikebicycle retailercycling clothing

All of these terms are likely to be cheaper keywords than “bicycle”. Also look at your site category section names and product names, to get more keyword ideas.

Bringing it all Together

Now that we have a good list of keywords, we need to group them properly. Group your keywords into themes – typically around five – 20 related keywords in each group.

In AdWords, create a new Ad Group for each theme. Each Ad Group will share the same ads and the same landing page, so good grouping is important.

You could create an Ad Group called “Mountain Bikes” containing the following keywords:

Mountain bikeOff road bikeDownhill bikeTrail bikeDirt bike

You would then create two ad variants for this group:

Mountain Bikes

Wide range of mountain bikes

in stock now

www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes

And

Cheap Mountain Bikes

Best prices on mountain bikes

available online now

www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes

 By creating the two variants we are letting Google do the hard work to see which one performs better. Note the specific landing page used. Repeat this process for each theme.

Once you have your campaign up and running, be sure to check on it once every few weeks. The first attempt is rarely optimal and so monitoring is critical. It’s easy to spend dozens of hours on creating the perfect campaign, so it’s up to you to balance your time relative to your AdWords budget.

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping-Cart-Reviews.com , the leading shopping cart information site. He lives in Sydney, Australia where he works on e-commerce sites, helping to maxmize their profitability. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/markbaa .

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eBay Live 2009: Going, Going…Gone

Last year people were surprised when eBay announced plans to cancel its 2009 eBay Live event.  At that time the company said smaller workshops would take place in various locations rather than one large event. EBay also said that the eBay Live event would return in 2010 in Orlando.

Not so, according to a statement recently made by Lorrie Norrington, president, eBay Marketplaces. EBay will continue to offer multiple smaller events that will replace the larger eBay Live conference.

From Live 2008 to On Location 2010

The last eBay Live event took place in Chicago in 2008, and attracted thousands of conference attendees, more than 700 eBay employees and hundreds of exhibitors.  While rumors of Live’s demise circulated in Chicago, the conference was considered a success—despite the fact that some attendees showed up in aluminum foil caps in silent protest of what they called eBay brainwashing tactics.

When the seven-year run of eBay Live events ended in Chicago, eBay said that it would not hold a 2009 event, but that the traditional gala would return in 2010 in Orlando, Florida. In place of the big event this year eBay plans to host multiple, smaller events nationwide.

Called “eBay: On Location,” the event will kick off in Orlando in February, replacing the previously announced August date for eBay Live.

In discussing the reasons behind changing up the event, Norrington said, "Many sellers and buyers have told us that although eBay Live is a terrific way to learn and network, they would enjoy more local events that don't require costly travel."

Some industry watchers cite economic hardship and the resulting lower attendance numbers as contributing factors to the demise of eBay Live. However, another reason for the dip in attendance may be that the eBay market—and community—has simply matured.  EBay members, who may have previously attended just to proudly show their eBay colors at the events, are now more concerned with turning profits and bottom lines then with spending money on airfare to attend Live.

In creating the new schedule, Norrington said that the goal would be to provide eBay: On Location events within a day's drive for as many sellers and buyers as possible. On Location events are expected to wrap up in August 2010 in eBay’s hometown of San Jose, Calif.—just in time to celebrate the company’s 15th anniversary.

Other dates and venues are still in the planning stages, and eBay sellers can sign up on the On Location Web site to be notified when dates and locations for the events are set.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG .

eBay Live 2009: Going, Going…GoneWall St. seeks to extend rally

UpClick Simplifies Selling Digital Goods

Merchants who sell digital goods online face challenges that most traditional e-tailers do not, such as high payment gateway costs and difficult-to-work-with affiliates programs. UpClick addresses those issues using a novel combination of a fully integrated secure checkout and an integrated affiliates program. The software is designed from the ground up to maximize the profitability of merchants selling digital goods.

An Overview

UpClick’s big selling point is its free payment gateway – the homepage screams zero percent transaction fees. The reality, as always, is a bit more complex. For transactions less than $40 it’s totally free. This compares very favorably with fees from digital-goods services like Clickbank and payment gateways like 2Checkout. For transactions more than $40 they charge 6.9 percent on the amount over $40, so if you’re dealing with high value, high volume sales you may do better looking elsewhere.

Of course, the biggest player in payment solutions for small businesses is PayPal. UpClick has a compelling value proposition for merchants who use PayPal – you can accept PayPal as a payment type, and UpClick will absorb the fees. That alone makes the company very appealing to lots of people.

UpClick is a bit confusing at first because it tries to be all things to all people. This in itself is admirable; however, it doesn’t clearly communicate the different offerings and the value in those offerings. As a result, the new user can easily become confused. However, persistence pays off.

Describe your products and their attributes on the UpClick set-up screen.
(Click for larger image).The Value in UpClick

The first step to selling your products with UpClick, of course, is to have your digital goods. The majority of current UpClick merchants sell software, presumably because the company offers good built-in functionality to support software e-tailers. For example, you can provide UpClick with a list of the software license keys, which they can issue to customers. This makes things simple for both the merchant and the customer.

Since the business model is based around up selling and cross selling, much of the product setup involves up selling and cross selling. As you setup your account, you are prompted with questions as to which category your product falls into. This lets UpClick provide the best complementary products and avoid competitive ones. There are also opportunities to manually select products you believe have the best up-sell opportunity.

Tracking

An impressive feature of the service is its openness. Rather than being a closed system, they are very open about integrating with other services. Built-in support for button-level tracking via Google or WebTrends encourages transparency and accountability.

Another feature that differentiates UpClick is its attitude toward affiliates. Affiliate networks often put up barriers up between the merchants and the affiliates. UpClick has taken the opposite approach by actively encouraging them to talk and to work together.

Internationalization

UpClick is headquartered in the bi-lingual city of Montreal. Multi-language and multi-currency capabilities are baked into the software from the ground up, not added as an after thought as is so often the case with such products.

Creating multi-language versions of product descriptions is very easy. More interesting, is being able to easily create multiple price points for different currencies.

For example, if your product is $29.95 (US), it will automatically convert it to other currencies – e.g. $37.66 Australian dollars (at time of writing). However, you can then override it and create a more locale-friendly pricing, such as $34.95 (AU) or $39.95 (AU). This should help boost international sales substantially – people always prefer to buy in their own currency.

Affiliates

The affiliates offering forms a key component of the platform. This can be a great sales boost to merchants and a potentially lucrative income stream for motivated affiliates.

Rather than distinguishing between merchants and affiliates in a very clear cut way (although, confusingly, UpClick makes the distinction in the signup process), it seems all merchants are affiliates. This makes sense as up-selling other merchants’ products – basically, affiliate selling – is such a core part of the product.

This has a number of benefits to vendors:

Expands range of outlets for their products Great exposure to large cross-section of people Introduces their product to customers who may not otherwise have considered it Achieves all this without charging extra money – just offer a reasonable percentage to affiliates, and it’s all done. For affiliates, there’s an easy-to-use system and a well-optimized checkout process that should increase conversions.

UpClick offers opportunities for cross- and up-selling products. (Click for larger image).What’s the Drawback?

UpClick isn’t for everyone. High volume, high value digital goods sales vendors should look elsewhere. The 6.9 percent charge cuts in on sales of more than $40. While this isn’t a disaster for lower-volume players, for some it could eat profits. Also, despite having a well-optimized checkout process, opportunities for optimization are limited.

Overall, this is a strong competitor in the digital-goods market and well worth checking out.

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping-Cart-Reviews.com , the leading shopping cart information site. He lives in Sydney, Australia where he works on e-commerce sites, helping to maxmize their profitability. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/markbaa .

Unemployed short on opportunities, benefitsUpClick Simplifies Selling Digital Goods

Marketing with Social Networking 101

The biggest online buzz in the last year or two has been the mainstreaming of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you have never used these applications; if you’re unsure just what social networking is all about and how it can benefit your business, then we’re here to help. In this article, I’ll explain how these sites can help you build your business brand, where to find the sites and what to do when you get there.

MySpace focuses on friends and interacting with them via messages and bulletins.
(Click for larger image).What is Social Networking?

Social networking as a concept is not a new phenomenon - in any business you stay in contact with your customers and with people in a position to refer customers to you. You provide them with information that falls within your expertise so that they develop trust in your business and in your brand. Traditionally you would do this through newsletters and word of mouth, for example.

Social networking sites let you maintain contact with customers and prospective customers online and provide information and resources to these people all at the one time and at relatively low cost.

When you join a social networking site you can find and make contact with potential consumers who are also members of that site’s community. In many cases you can do this even if you don't personally know these people. In short, social networking sites can provide easier access to your target clientele and a simple means of interacting with them.

How to Use Social Networking

Let's start out being clear what social networking is not. It is not a way to blatantly advertise a business or service, and these sites are not a place where your key focus should be on telling other people what you have for sale or for publicizing special offers.

Instead, social networking sites give you a forum where people can develop trust in your brand and in you as the owner of the business. When done right, people within that community will naturally turn to you when they’re in need of your products or services because they already know and trust you.

But you can only achieve this through building your expertise in their eyes and becoming a trusted resource to them.

The Main Social Sites

There are a lot of social networking sites, but the biggest include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn. Each of them appeals to a different demographic and you need to determine which site attracts your potential clientele. For example, MySpace typically appeals to a young audience as it can be highly customized. Bands and record labels also use it to publicize music.

Facebook lets you create personal pages, business pages and groups for people with similar interests.
(Click for larger image).

Facebook is less customizable, there are groups you can join, and it also lets you add business pages to publicize your business. LinkedIn is a good site for making business contacts, and Twitter is a micro-blogging site that lets you follow people to see what they are saying — in 140 characters or less.

Before you commit to a social networking campaign, familiarize yourself with the sites. With your target customer in mind, determine where you are most likely to find the people who can benefit from your product or service. You want to be where your customer is so that the time you spend in social networking will get you exposure to the people you need to connect with the most.

The sites are all free, and they will require you to register to use them. Go though the signup procedure and have a look around. Evaluate each site carefully and you might also ask your current customers which sites they use.

Rather than jumping in and writing a lot of posts, take time to understand the process. While most sites don’t have a lot of rules, each has its own etiquette considerations that you should respect. Taking the time to understand what behavior’s acceptable will prevent you from being called out for behaving badly.

Remember too that anything you write on these sites is public and can't generally be removed - there will always be someone who has a copy of what you wrote. If you wouldn’t say something in public, don't say it on the Web either.

Micro-blogging site Twitter.com lets you write 140-character posts and follow people who post about subjects you're interested in.
(Click for larger image).

Once you commit to a social networking site, revisit your profile there and make sure the information is correct and complete. Make sure to include Web site and blog details in your social networking profile — you want anyone who views it to be able to find your Web site easily. If you’re putting effort into posting on Twitter, for example, add a link to your Web site inviting visitors to follow you on Twitter. It’s important that you make yourself highly visible to your audience regardless of wherever they first encounter you.

How You Benefit

It’s important to be clear about your social networking expectations. It’s unlikely that social networking will, of itself, bring new sales to your business particularly in the short term. What social networking is all about is developing your brand and giving the people you meet online a chance to see that you can be a trusted resource for them.

When you have established trust and earned their respect, people will turn to you when they need the kind of information or product that you are selling. With this in mind, it’s important that you take a professional approach to social networking and have a clear goal to showcase your expertise and to become a valued resource for your audience.

What You Should Post

On sites like Twitter and Facebook you can post links to information on the Web. For example, if you own an online bead shop you could post links to articles on DIY jewelry making or on choosing the right bead for a particular project — articles that would interest to your target market.

You can, and should, include links to your own blog if you have posts of this kind but also link to other high-quality resources that you find. If you set yourself up to be a repository of useful information about beading, people will stop looking for jewelry projects or bead information themselves and come to you to hear what you say because they recognize you as being a knowledgeable resource.

The name of the game is to be generous and to provide your expertise as a resource to your potential clientele. It’s this brand identification and the trust that you’re building that will ultimately benefit your business.

For keeping in touch with business contacts, many people use the professional network site, LinkedIn.
(Click for larger image).You Need to Know

There are a few gotchas in social networking to be aware of. The first is that the day-to-day basics of your business are the most important thing so focus on making sure that your orders are fulfilled, your store stocked and questions from your current customers answered before you spend a lot of time on social networking. Social networking should be an adjunct to a successful business not an excuse for avoiding the day-to-day tasks.

Take care with what you post and ensure that the answers that you provide are accurate — wrong or careless answers can backfire and diminish your credibility. Always be polite and professional even if you don’t agree with someone, and be respectful of their point of view.

Social networking sites can consume a lot of time so be selective. Having a valued presence on one or two sites is much better than having an ad hoc presence on lots of sites.

Social networking is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it’s not going to provide your business with benefits overnight. However, it can be a valuable adjunct to your business marketing. Millions of people are using these sites and, as a member, you have access to them too. They’re a good way to help establish your brand and creditability in a cost effective way.

More ResourcesFacebook Tips: How to Use the New Business Page LayoutTwitter for E-tailersHow to Use Twitter as an Online Marketing ToolFacebook How-To Guide: Create Business Pages and Ad Campaigns

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

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Review: WebPlus X2 Simplifies E-commerce Design

If you’re an online seller or retailer, it’s increasingly important to have your own Web site.  Whether you sell on eBay, Etsy or any other online marketplace, you still need to invest in your own central business or Web shop. From your own site you can direct customers to other channels you sell through, and vice versa.

For many sellers, the challenge to getting their own Web site is often a lack of budget or know-how. But you don’t need hundreds of pages and a larger-than-life Web presence.  You can start small just by getting your pertinent business information online, and invest in like marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) down the road.

No HTML or Programming Skills Required

One way to obtain a business Web site online is to use Web site design software, such as the easy-to-use Web Plus X2 from Serif

WebPlus X2 offers a selection of professional templates from business and e-commerce to home and hobby themes.
(Click for larger image).

WebPlus X2 offers an interface that’s similar to desktop publishing software.  All you need to do is edit templates to design the site’s pages, and the software renders the HTML code to create the different pages within your site. 

This particular software package makes it easy to create a Web site using basic drag-and-drop features and pre-defined, editable regions within the templates.  With a quick click, more experienced designers can work directly with the HTML code.

Create Interactive Sites with E-commerce Functions

Web Plus X2 comes with a detailed user guide and the program installation CD, in addition to template pack CDs that contain templates for Business and Commerce or Home and Hobby Web sites.

One of the reasons we looked at WebPlus X2 is that it offers e-commerce functions for adding a shopping cart to your site and features for secure payment processing. You can also include interactive features such as blogs, forums, and videos to your Web shop.

Before getting started, you should gather your assets—that is any company logos and images that you currently use for marketing—and have them ready to insert in your new Web site as you lay out the design.

Getting Started

After installing the program and the Business and Commerce template pack, you’re ready to build your own Web shop. Getting started is easy. From the File menu, click Startup Wizard, then simply choose Create and select Use Design template.

Here you will see a preview image of the available templates, as well as images of each page included in the template set. The usual selection includes templates for the standard pages you would expect to see on a business site, such as home, about, services, products, privacy policy and others.

After choosing a template to use for your site’s layout, you can then select a scheme. This allows you to change the colors in the default template so you can use your own logo and brand colors in the pages.

When you are happy with the colors, you can edit the default text and image regions from within the template to incorporate your own dialog and images.  You do this by selecting a pre-filled box with your mouse—then you highlight and delete the existing template information and replace it with your own business details.

Edit the default text and image regions from within the template to incorporate your own dialog and images.
(Click for larger image).

As you edit these text areas in the template you can change fonts, text and image colors and also add your own images.  You can make these changes across a master page—which pushes those changes to all pages in your template set. You can also open each page within the site to make individual section edits.

As anyone who has designed with templates can attest, you may find that the template set you choose lacks a specific type of page or feature you want on your site. WebPlus X2 lets you “copy” a page from another template into the set you are working with. This lets you work in a style you like with pages that best suit your business needs.

Special Features for E-commerce Designs

What makes WebPlus X2 stand out in a crowded software market is that it offers basic e-commerce functionality straight out of the box.

You can include e-commerce functions in your Web site by using the built-in WebPlus X2 PayPal wizard. The wizard correctly inserts all the information and functionality into your product pages for successful online selling.  WebPlus X2 also provides wizard functionality for Roman Cart and Mal's Cart.

WebPlus X2 also supports larger stores and catalogues through its database merge technology. This lets retailers easily feature large amounts of database information, like product descriptions, pictures and prices.

Of course, an e-commerce site needs more than just "buy buttons" and product images.  WebPlus X2 offers additional features that e-commerce site designers can use to their advantage, such as templates for e-mail marketing campaigns and search engine optimization controls.

These controls will help you to create keywords and other meta tags for search engines to improve your site’s search rank. You can also set up an analytics profile with Serif to obtain visitor analytics once your site has been published online.

Pricing and Availability

You can download WebPlus X2 or buy it on Serif’s Web site for $79.99.  WebPlus X2 works with Pentium PCs running Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or Vista operating systems.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Music gear mecca’s siren song wanesReview: WebPlus X2 Simplifies E-commerce Design

iTaggit Helps Sellers Determine Online Prices

iTaggit.com, an online seller's resource for valuing and organizing household items and collectibles has launched a new tool called “ValueRange It”. This new tool, which is an added feature for iTaggit customers, can help sellers by providing a value range for any item.

Using ValueRange helps sellers determine an opening or reserve selling price for their products.
(Click for larger image).

The ValueRange It tool, according to Amanda McGuckin Hager, iTaggit.com’s director of marketing, uses proprietary technology to sift through recent price data on millions of items to determine an accurate value range. 

According to Hager, iTaggit has always offered a value tool, but ValueRange It has recently been updated and is now a more prominent part of the site’s services. She describes the new tool as a search engine for understanding item value.

How It Works

On the iTaggit site, you simply type the product details in to the ValueRange It search box. To obtain the best results, you should be descriptive when searching—but not too specific.  For example, you could enter in phrases like 2002 Gibson Les Paul Guitar or Madame Alexander Doll , leaving out details like a specific color.

ValueRange It will scan the Internet, largely drawing on closed eBay listings to generate low, average and high values for the item.  For the most part, the different values will help you figure out what price you can expect to get for your item, taking in to account the item's history and condition. You can also refine your ValueRange It results for a completely customized value range for your specific item.

Based on the ValueRange It results, you can use the data to help determine the best minimum or starting bid price.

Hager cautions sellers that a tool like ValueRange It cannot take the place of certified appraisals for items like real estate, cars, or high-end gold jewelry.

“For most other items, the tool can provide online sellers with price data to help them make smart decisions when trying to decide what to do with their belongings—be it sell, insure, donate, or simply track prices over time,” she said.

Integration with Other iTaggit Services

You can access the ValueRange It search engine for research purposes, but the tool is also integrated with Itaggit’s other online selling services. 

The tool’s “Sell It” function lets you post item with a description and photos or video, and then broadcast them to multiple online marketplaces and social networks, as frequently as desired.  Supported platforms include Craigslist, eBay, Facebook and Oodle.

Consumers and homeowners can also use the ValueRange It tool and iTaggit’s other online services to track valuables and item prices for insurance purposes.

Pricing and Availability

Itaggit offers several subscription choices, which provide a set number of items you can have in your account and a number of ValueRange IT uses. The basic account, at $19.99 per year, lets you post up to 20 items and access ValueRange It 20 times. The $9.99 per month account offers unlimited items stored in your Itaggit account and 25 ValueRange IT uses per month.

iTaggit also offers a free account that lets you post one item on iTaggit and access ValueRange IT three times so you can test the service and see how it works before subscribing.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Don’t let summer’s laze reach your walletiTaggit Helps Sellers Determine Online Prices

10 Tips for Selling on Kijiji

If you’re unfamiliar with Kijiji, it’s a free local network for posting buy, sell, trade, jobs and other classified ads. Kijiji (pronounced “ka-gee-gee”) has individual sites for specific cities in several countries including the United States and Canada.  

Local classifieds are a good option for online sellers who have larger items that are expensive to ship, items that are hard to sell “sight unseen” or lower-value items where listing fees can cut profits.

Kijiji registration is optional, but with it you can quickly and easily manage your live ads.
(Click for larger image).Kijiji for Beginners

Selling on Kijiji differs greatly from eBay and other online marketplaces. When you use Kijiji, there is no contractual agreement if someone offers to buy an item from you.  Also, buyers and sellers do not have any type of protection or the means to conduct the transaction through the Kijiji site. 

As the seller, you simply post your classified ad and interested buyers contact you by e-mail directly from the listing page.  Transactions are all managed off-site, without intervention by Kijiji.

Posting and replying to ads on the site is completely free. You can post up to 25 unique ads on Kijiji every day, with each ad staying online for 60 days.

Tips for Selling on Kijiji

For the past year I have been using Kijiji, instead of eBay, to sell used computers. It was obvious that this type of item was best suited to a local market—a computer tower is expensive to ship, and buyers can view and test the system before buying.

Here are 10 tips for selling on Kijiji—things that I do in my own listings—to produce better quality leads and sales.

1.    Register an account: Kijiji does not require you to register to post; however, with a registered account you can use a "My Kijiji" dashboard for quick access to your ads and page view information.  If you plan to frequently list on Kijiji, make registering on the site your first step.

2.    Keep personal details to a minimum: If you sell items from your home, think twice about adding your house address and phone number in the public ad.  Instead, provide detailed contact information— at your own discretion— in private e-mails with interested buyers.

3.    Do the research: Search Kijiji for similar items to see what categories people use and to get a better idea of current selling prices in your local area. This can also help you choose keywords to use in your title (e.g. use the keywords that are getting the most page views).

4.    Use a template:  Mange multiple Kijiji ads by creating a basic template, in Word or even Notepad, that you can copy-and-paste into each ad you post.  The template should contain the basic information you carry over to each ad, such as contact information, pick-up and delivery details, and so on.  Save each ad you list in a file on your computer for future use.

5.    Send ads to top category page: On some Kijiji sites, you might get an e-mail to let you know your listing has fallen off the first page for the category you have listed in, and an offer to “bump” your ad back to the main for a small fee of $1.99. You can bump the ad yourself by deleting it and reposting it as a new ad. If you have saved the ads in a template, you can put your item back on the main category page in seconds.

6.    Don’t delete pending sale ads: Kijiji sellers can save time by not deleting an ad until the item has actually sold. Don’t delete the ad as soon as an e-mail comes in with a request to buy, as the person may never show up to get the item.  If you leave the ad online you can go back and respond to the second and subsequent requests after a “no-show.”

7.    Provide viewing and pick-up details: Specify times and dates that people can view or pick-up the item, as well as delivery or local-pick-up-only details in the text of your ad.  This will save you time in responding to basic e-mail questions. This type of information should be included in your template so you can simply copy and paste the details in each new ad you post.

8.     Be honest: Always be accurate and honest in your ad. The more details you provide, the less time you’ll save in responding to e-mails. Be sure to upload at least one or two clear photos of the item you are selling. Kijiji allows you to include four images (up to 4MB) with each ad.

9.    Add a guarantee: Like most online marketplaces, Kijiji buyers also like to feel confident about a seller before making a purchase. By adding a simple guarantee you will encourage more inquiries and more sales.  With used computers I offer a 21-day guarantee against hardware failure (or free replacement). Since adding that to my ads, sales have nearly doubled.

10. Monitor and reply quickly: If you are porting an existing business to Kijiji and you sell multiples of similar items, track your best listing and selling days. Over time you will see a pattern emerge that will help you determine what days are best for having your item on page one in any given category.  Also, be sure to set up a dedicated e-mail address just for Kijiji to help you to better monitor incoming e-mails so you can get replies out to interested buyers before they move on to another listing.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Save the Sale with New PayPal Tools and Data

Online payment service, PayPal commissioned a survey (conducted by comScore) through its SMB merchant services division to find out why online shoppers are abandoning their carts. According to PayPal, the average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109—and that adds up to a lot of missed sales for online merchants.

The PayPal survey revealed that nearly half of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times over a period of three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and a lack of convenience during the check-out process.

The survey showed that high shipping cost was the largest single reason for cart abandonment. Additionally, the survey found that if merchants had provided shipping costs upfront, this might have caused 40 percent of participants to complete the purchase.

Eddie Davis, senior director of SMB merchant services says that it’s critical for merchants make the checkout experience easy and to make costs transparent in order to get shoppers to buy.

As a result of the survey findings, PayPal has launched a new Express Checkout feature – the PayPal Instant Update API. This new tool gives merchants cart functionality that ultimately encourages shoppers to purchase.

The PayPal Instant Update API helps merchants provide customers with the key shopping information they need upfront.  By integrating the new API, merchants can show order details; including shipping options, insurance choices and tax totals, earlier in the check-out process.

In an Express Checkout, shoppers will still pay on your site; however, they don’t need to reenter shipping, billing, or payment information because the information is already available from PayPal.  This lets merchants offer shoppers a more simplified and expedited checkout process while providing the buyer with the what they’re looking for– that is more detailed shipping, insurance, and tax information.  

Shoppers Wary

PayPal’s survey also indicated that the economy still has shoppers wary about clicking the purchase button.  More than one-third of respondents abandoned checkout because they didn’t plan for all of the expenses; while more than 25 percent indicated they left the site to search for a coupon.

The good news for merchants is that one-third of shoppers said they later returned to the same site to buy.  Another 20 percent of shoppers purchased the items at a brick and mortar store or on a competitor’s Web site.

To help merchants retain those potentially lost dollars in the dropped carts, Davis says that merchants need to remember the items that customers abandon, and make it easy for them to buy when they return.  

He said, “Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is also a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”

More Reasons Why Shoppers Abandon

PayPal’s cart abandonment study also revealed additional reasons why shoppers tend to drop their cart before making a purchase.  According to the survey results, at least a fifth of all U.S. respondents cited the following as very important reasons for cart abandonment;

High shipping charges: 46 percent Wanted to comparison shop: 37 percent Lack of money: 36 percent Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 percent Wanted to shop offline: 26 percent Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 percent Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 percent Couldn’t find customer support: 22 percent Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 percent

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Common Google AdWords Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Most ecommerce businesses use AdWords to generate traffic. In essence it’s pretty simple – you bid for search terms in Google, your ad appears if someone searches for that term, and you pay only if someone clicks on that ad. It’s a great system, but it does have a few traps.

Introducing Quality Score

How much you pay per click depends on many factors. A common misconception is that it’s a simple auction – if someone is bidding 50 cents per click (cpc), a bid of 51 cpc will appear in the ad slot above. It’s a bit trickier than that.

Google wants ads that are relevant. If the quality of the ads is higher, more people click them. Google assigns each advertiser’s keyword a quality score between one (lowest) and 10. If you are paying 50 cpc and your ad has a quality score of 5, and your competitor is paying 40 cpc for an ad with a score of 8, it’ll likely appear above yours, getting more clicks for less money. Getting your quality score higher is important.

The best way to increase your quality score is to increase your click-through rate (CTR). If your ad is viewed 100 times (called impressions ) and clicked on twice, your click-through rate is 2 percent. Generally your click-through rate should be at least 1 percent.

You can see your quality score by hovering your mouse over the “eligible” column.
(Click for larger image).

To increase your CTR, you can have your ad shown less often, or clicked on more often. Let’s look at both scenarios.

Negative Keywords

A common problem: your ad shows up for irrelevant search terms. If you are selling makeup, you might bid for the keyword “makeup.” However, your ad will show up when someone searches for “makeup artist”, “makeup classes”, “makeup jobs,” and many more. Someone looking for a makeup artist probably isn’t interested in buying makeup, so you have increased your impressions needlessly and lowered your CTR. Adding negative keywords can reduce this problem.

Here’s how you add negative keywords. Go into AdWords. At the bottom of your keywords screen you’ll see + Negative keywords. Open this and add your negative keywords. You can choose ad grouplevel but generally campaign level is better.

By adding lots of negative keywords you can decrease your impressions, and increase your CTR and your quality score. In this case, “artist”, “classes” and “jobs” are good negative keywords. Here’s a collection of generic negative keywords for inspiration.

Creating Ad Variations

Sometimes making small changes in an ad result in big changes in CTR. AdWords has a neat tool -- called Ad Variations -- that helps with this problem.

Go into your Ad Group in AdWords, and where you see ads, simply create another one. Google will automatically rotate your multiple ads to different users. Over time it will show the higher-performing ad more and the lower-performing ad less, increasing your CTR automatically. Start with two or three ad variations, and once there’s a clear winner, use that one as the base for more variants.

Choosing the Right Pages

Many AdWords campaigns send all traffic to their homepage. You’ll get a better result by pointing the ad to a specific page. The page you point your ad to is known as a “landing page.”

For example, you run a bicycle shop. The word “bicycle” will probably go to the homepage. However, ads for the keyword “mountain bike” should point to your mountain bike page. This will almost certainly increase sales.

If someone searches for “Holstar Lightning Men’s Mountain Bike”, point them at the product page. The rule: always point ads at the most specific page. Yes, it’s a bit more work to setup, but your sales will increase.

Choose the Best Words

Many people just bid for a few of the “big” words. For our bicycle shop example, the keyword “bicycle” would clearly be very popular. However, it would also be very competitive and expensive to buy, and generic words tend to result in fewer sales.

A better approach is to go for a large number of less popular words. Instead of five popular words, use 200 less popular ones. That sounds daunting, but help is at hand -- Google’s keyword tool.

Enter some popular words and it will generate some alternatives. Entering bicycle returns about 200 results, including some possibly useful sounding words (depending on your business) such as:

racing bicyclemen’s bicyclefolding bikebicycle retailercycling clothing

All of these terms are likely to be cheaper keywords than “bicycle”. Also look at your site category section names and product names, to get more keyword ideas.

Bringing it all Together

Now that we have a good list of keywords, we need to group them properly. Group your keywords into themes – typically around five – 20 related keywords in each group.

In AdWords, create a new Ad Group for each theme. Each Ad Group will share the same ads and the same landing page, so good grouping is important.

You could create an Ad Group called “Mountain Bikes” containing the following keywords:

Mountain bikeOff road bikeDownhill bikeTrail bikeDirt bike

You would then create two ad variants for this group:

Mountain Bikes

Wide range of mountain bikes

in stock now

www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes

And

Cheap Mountain Bikes

Best prices on mountain bikes

available online now

www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes

 By creating the two variants we are letting Google do the hard work to see which one performs better. Note the specific landing page used. Repeat this process for each theme.

Once you have your campaign up and running, be sure to check on it once every few weeks. The first attempt is rarely optimal and so monitoring is critical. It’s easy to spend dozens of hours on creating the perfect campaign, so it’s up to you to balance your time relative to your AdWords budget.

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping-Cart-Reviews.com , the leading shopping cart information site. He lives in Sydney, Australia where he works on e-commerce sites, helping to maxmize their profitability. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/markbaa .

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